The 2023 Packer 25 — Dan Atkinson
Editor’s note: The following profile is from the 2023 Packer 25, our annual tribute to 25 leaders, innovators and agents of change across the fresh produce supply chain. (You can view all honorees here.) This feature has been edited for length and clarity.
Dan Atkinson — Regional Produce Supervisor for Hy-Vee Inc.
Brett Bremeser was sure he picked the right guy for the job.
He had plucked young Dan Atkinson from the produce aisle of a Hy-Vee store in Iowa City and put him in an executive job supervising produce departments across a large swath of stores in some key markets. Bremser, then the company’s executive vice president and chief merchandising officer, predicted — and expected — big things.
“Dan has a very diverse history in produce that will serve him extremely well as a supervisor,” Bremser said at the time. “He has successfully led produce departments in our flagship stores and has great experience in produce procurement at the corporate level. He is an excellent trainer with a patient demeanor and deep knowledge. Dan has the absolute highest standards for quality, and he sets those expectations for others.”
And to think that only a few years earlier, Atkinson was a college student working part-time for Hy-Vee and reluctantly studying to be a schoolteacher. It was around that time that he discovered the difference between having a job and embracing a passion.
“I figured out that I really, really loved produce,” he said recently between visits to his 36 stores in eastern Iowa. “Showing people how to pick a peach. How to tell if a cantaloupe is ripe. Telling them what a plumcot is and why they’re so awesome.”
“I knew produce was what I wanted to do,” he added.
Atkinson quickly became a recognized leader at a $13 billion company that lives and dies by what happens in Aisle 1.
“Dan drives his stores to be the absolute best at merchandising, to be right on price, and to ensure that quality is paramount,” said Hy-Vee Vice President of Produce and Floral John Griesenbrock, who nominated Atkinson for The Packer’s 2023 Produce Retailer of the Year award.
“Dan is a champion of change. He’s not afraid to try new items and new ways to merchandise them,” Griesenbrock added. “He is a very intelligent problem solver, and he knows how to organize data to drive results.”
Atkinson’s passion for produce took root in 2010, when Hy-Vee promoted him to department manager in Iowa City. He later spent time in produce purchasing at Hy-Vee’s corporate office. He returned to retail (“I missed building the big, visually powerful displays and the excitement of introducing customers to new items when they came out,” he said.) and led produce efforts in a pair of new flagship stores before Bremser selected him to supervise operations at the regional level.
Along the way, the United Fresh Produce Association named Atkinson a national produce manager of the year (2014), and he built a reputation around the Midwest for innovation, as well as for the ability to impart its importance to produce pros throughout the company. The latter earned him a gig teaching the finer points of produce to hundreds of employees through the company’s management training program, Hy-Vee University.
Atkinson encourages all three dozen of his produce teams, from managers to part-time clerks, to trust their instincts when it comes to customer service and always be ready with a knife to offer vegetables and fruit samples right there on the sales floor.
“I tell my people that our customers just want to buy something that tastes good, so let them try it,” he said.
Atkinson said he’s never happier than when he’s sharing info with a shopper about which apple variety makes the best pie, or which potato makes the crispiest fries. It’s a great day when he can teach a produce clerk about rose apriums and Caribbean papayas. And he goes home happy when his stores are first-to-market with the latest “it” produce item being talked about by a celebrity chef on Food Network.
“The customer experience is everything. It’s the extras. It’s the impactful displays, the demos, knowing the product,” he said. “It’s how we grow and maintain our business. I hope that someday my legacy at Hy-Vee will be that I helped take that experience to another level.”
